


Saccharine

by ginygroov



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Child Frisk, F/F, F/M, Frisk is a Sweetheart, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Manipulative Sans, Non-Binary Chara, Non-Binary Frisk, Obsession, Orphan Frisk, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Please Kill Me, Poor Frisk, Post-Undertale Pacifist Route, Sans is a Creep, Time Travel, lolita but undertale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 20:35:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8768341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginygroov/pseuds/ginygroov
Summary: It had been over three years since Sans had seen the Underground. Of course, this gift would come with a few sacrifices, but the others would never remember. After all, he would do anything to ensure his happy ending. Frisk didn't have to worry anymore. He would take care of them... forever.And they should't have to remember either.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first story I'm posting to this site, along with being the first fan fiction I've written for Undertale.
> 
> I'm sorry. I really am. I tried really, really hard to make something light-hearted and funny, but instead I'm giving you this monstrosity. 
> 
> Warnings about cursing and some really f***ed up thoughts from Sans.

**_Five_ **

 

It was four in the afternoon, and the too-long grass swayed in the summer breeze. It had only been five weeks since the Barrier had been broken; the hot sunlight felt so foreign on his exposed bones.

Sans should’ve gotten a house in the city if he’d known mowing a lawn took so much work. (The fact that the kid lived down the street from him made up for this, though. )

He still had a half hour until Papyrus came back from his cooking lesson with Undyne. Sans took out a pencil and began his work. Numbers cross-crossed across his notebook as he wrote equation after equation. It was hard work, but it’ll pay off.

It was such a funny thing, really,

‘ _Determination_ ’.

 

**_Four_ **

 

The Fourth of July and Frisk had almost put their eye out with a sparkler. The air was hot and sticky and Sans quietly swore to keep the kid away from the damned things. His hand tightened protectively around Frisk’s shoulder as the child hugged him.

Under a secret panel in his workbench, his blue-prints were almost complete.

(Trying to come up with a name seemed to be the hardest part. The blueprints he had improvised off of had called it the Magical Omission Diverter.

MOD. That sounded pretty cool.)

 

**_Three_ **

 

It had been three minutes before New Years, and Sans was in his basement, looking at readings from a machine. He cursed as the screen began buzzing with error messages and warnings. The clicking of his fingers against the glass became more hurried and irritated until it exploded in his face. The sound was muffled by both the thick door and the belated cheer from the upstairs living-room.

Back to work.

 

**_Two_ **

 

They had gone so far in those two years since Frisk had broken the Barrier. The young Ambassador had integrated monsters into the Surface within a year. After another, it felt like the monsters had lived on the Surface their whole lives.

Sans almost felt bad that it would all disappear soon. _Almost_.

 

**_One_ **

 

It had been one day before the third year anniversary of the Barrier breaking. They had been preparing for the party; it had been decided that the celebration would be held at the skeleton’s house due to various circumstances. (Undyne’s house still had singe marks from Thanksgiving, while Toriel and Frisk had stopped hosting after spending hours cleaning up the spaghetti stains off the walls.)

Papyrus was busying himself with vacuuming the second floor as Sans finished his task of moving his sock two feet to the right. His work completed, he walked down the now memorized path to the basement.

The machine was finished. After over two years worth of work, his invention could use human determination to manipulate the force he dubbed the Anomaly. With just a bit of tweaking, Sans could reset time all the way back to when the Anomaly had first manifested: when Frisk had fallen into the Underground.

Sans briefly wondered if it was okay to do this, to overwrite history itself, just for a chance to relive what had happened those two years ago.

He covered up any doubt with the rush of adrenaline he felt every time his mind strayed to the machine in his basement. That warmth that filled his chest every time he looked at Frisk.

That was just his pride in the twelve year-old, right?

He sat down on the cheap rolling chair, feeling the chair creak and hearing his bones rub against the rough fabric. All he had left to do was to calibrate it so that he would keep the memories instead of the kid. It was actually quite simple. A bit of math and he harness the power he thought only the most determined humans could have.

(If only his feelings about the kid were as easy to figure out)

He emerged almost an hour, finger bones clean of any oil and grime, and went to the dining room to eat dinner. It seemed that Papyrus had tried to make lasagna that looked suspiciously like flattened spaghetti noodles.

“ _SANS_! HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN DOWN THERE?! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, HAVE ALREADY FINISHED MAKING THE FLAT SPAGHETTI THEY CALL ‘LASAGNA’.” His brother shouted as Sans slunk into the room.

Sans grabbed a bottle of ketchup, pausing to take a swig from it before saying, “bro, i haven't been down there _that_ long. see?” He pointed to the clock on the wall, “i’ve only been down there for the _pasta_ hour,” (he must be really tired if he was falling back into his old pasta jokes) “and _tibia_ honest, you only told me to move the sock, which I did.”

“HMPH! CURSE MY CHOICE OF WORDS. NEXT TIME, PLEASE MOVE THE SOCK _OUT_ OF THE LIVING ROOM, SANS, WE HAVE TO KEEP UP APPEARANCES WHEN THE YOUNG AMBASSADOR COMES TOMORROW!”

Papyrus began to begin talking about how horrible it was that Mettaton couldn’t visit. Sans picked at the flattened pasta. Discreetly, he flicked bits of it towards the trash can.

Silently, Sans wondered if it was a bad thing that he had planned to activate the machine tomorrow. He hoped that Frisk wouldn’t notice his disappointment if the test-run failed. If it did work…

_He quietly laughed. It better work._

Finishing his ‘lasagna’, Sans disappeared, reappearing shortly afterward in his room. He sidestepped the treadmill and the trash tornado and tumbled into his bed, watching as dust flew off the covers. How long had it been since he had last slept in his room?

Sans had been spending most nights in his basement for the past month, sleeping on the couch in the mornings. Papyrus had just attributed it to Sans just being himself, so he wasn't very concerned with his brother’s new sleeping habits.

The sleeves of his jacket were smeared in ketchup, the brown oil stains hidden under the grime accumulated over the course of a week. Sans licked at a stain, the taste of motor oil blending with the ketchup on his tongue.

“ew.”

Sans wiped at his mouth. He wondered if it had been a good idea to skip lunch; Pap’s cooking _was_ somewhat edible after all this time.

Remembering something, he began looking around for his phone, phalanges curling around the his old cell phone once he saw it on the ground. Alphys had added a dimensional box to most of the monster’s phones soon after arriving above ground, and she had been working on a way to improve the technology of human phones. “Those new tablet phones are what make it so hard,” she said to him as she worked on his phone, shaking her head when Sans offered her some ketchup for her troubles.

Sans had made a habit of keeping some ketchup or fries in his phone for emergencies. He reached into the box and grabbed an unopened bottle.

He chugged half of the contents, leaving just enough for the morning. With a bit of something to fill his figurative stomach, Sans flopped back into bed. The lights in his sockets slowly faded as he fell asleep, turning them into endless pits of black.

“i can't wait for the party tomorrow.”

\---

The morning came all too soon, yet not soon enough. Sunlight filtered down from behind half closed blinds, burning into his eye-sockets until Sans had gotten up and closed them all the way.

After waking up, the rest of his morning passed in a blur. His filthy hoodie was thrown into the washing machine, the grime and dirt almost invisible by the time noon rolled around. Sans lightly touched a patch that had been stained a dark brown, just above his wrist. He wondered if it could pass for ketchup, rubbing it as if he could somehow hide the stain.

_He felt his sins crawling on his back._

Papyrus had begun to cook lunch, if the bangs and explosions from the kitchen meant anything. Everyone would be arriving at four or five, so Sans had at least three hours to finalize the adjustments on the machine. He was just finished tightening the screws when he heard the doorbell ring.

“SAAANNS! CAN YOU GET IT? I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, AM TRYING TO GET THE SPAGHETTI CASSEROLE OUT OF THE OVEN!”

“sure, i’ll be there in a second.” He stepped into empty space, reappearing in front of the door. The knocking continued, loud enough that Sans guessed Undyne was behind the door. He opened it, seeing the former guard with the former royal scientist.

“yo undyne, alphys. pap’s in the kitch-”

“SANS! WHO IS IT?”

“Hey Papyrus! I suplexed another boulder today!” Undyne yelled, kicking off her boots and running into the house. Alphys followed, a tray of slightly charred chocolate-chip cookies in her hands. She looked apologetically at Sans.

“go right ahead alph, you can put the cookies on the table.” Sans stepped to the side, “undyne sure looks chipper.”

“Y-yeah. She wouldn't stop talking about the party this morning. A-and she suplexed a boulder again so…” Alphy made a shrugging motion. She walked into the dining room as Sans popped into the living room to catch up on some reading. He was about halfway into the physics book hidden in his joke book before he heard another knock at the door. It continued like this for the next hour, until the only people who hadn't arrived yet were Frisk and Toriel.

A soft knock on the door interrupted their conversation. Sans had opened it in less than a second, smiling as he saw the familiar face of Frisk. The young ambassador grinned and hugged him, not noticing Sans’ slight flinch.

“oof! nice to see you too, kiddo.” The child grinned, a pair of gleaming teeth peeking through pink lips. Sans felt his head go fuzzy at the sight. He really needed to get more sleep.

“Saaans! I haven't seen you all week! Oh, we brought pie! Mom made it, and guess who we ran into?”

Said person then burst into the house, plaster trailing behind him. Mettaton strided into the room, not even a hair on his metal head out of place; Sans groaned as he looked at the pulverized remains of the wall (did insurance cover robot break-ins?).

“hey, you gonna pay for tha-”

“Darlings! Guess who came back early from Hollywood?”

 _‘...not this guy again.’_ He really wanted to stab the hunk of scrap metal and disco lights and maybe blast him to kingdom come, but politely restrained himself. Instead, holding back a groan of irritation, Sans plastered a fake smile on his face.

“ha ha ha. _wall_ this makes it the tenth time this has happened, (and not _tibia_ party pooper but it’s a bit of a pain in the _coccyx_ ) i guess the ghost was looking a tad _ghastly_ without ya, mr. roboto.” Sans forced out a laugh as his hand clenched into a fist inside his pocket. He winced as he saw the messed up living room. How much would repairs cost?

The robot waltzed inside, calling for his cousin and Sans turned to ruffle Frisk’s hair, only to pat empty space.

“kiddo?”

He looked at the hole in the wall for a last time before groaning and turning around. He walked into the kitchen, where Frisk had quickly entered some sort of conversation with Undyne on, uh, spear management? Or something. Frisk was just nodding their head as Undyne raved about something or another.

The talk shifted to the spread of food, which Sans had been very happy to sample earlier. He had grabbed some fries and ketchup, and he was about to take a seat in the living room when he looked at the clock.

It was already half past seven. The party would go on for one and a half more hours. If he snuck downstairs, no one would notice. He excused himself during a lull in conversation and teleported into his basement.

The lights down in the basement were much dimmer than upstairs, and Sans found himself momentarily in the dark until his eyes adjusted. The large machine sat in the corner, covered by a cloth.

He turned it on, hearing the soft humming that accompanied the startup process. The graphs were stable, with no large dips or jumps. Sans pressed a button and the humming abruptly stopped.

“what the…? damn it, is it broken again?” He smacked the machine, the _clang_ of bone on metal almost unheard compared to the laughter upstairs. He was sure it would have worked, it had been running so smoothly earlier.

Sans was about to call it quits and return upstairs when a quiet beeping began.

That had never happened before. Suddenly a blinding white light flashed and everything went silent. Sans opened his eyes.

“what the heck just—oh my god!”

He was in a dark room. A soft light emanated from the center of the darkness and the wind whistled around him. His footsteps echoed in the endless space as he approached the light. It was a calm but lonely void.

Two words glowed, floating in space.

 _‘Continue’_ or ‘ _Reset’_

“huh, it actually worked.” despite how calm his words sounded, his usual smile was the widest and most genuine it has been in years, rivaled only by his grin that day, three years ago. It bordered on manic at the rush of energy he felt looking at what he imagined the kid had seen as well.

His hand slowly approached the _RESET_ button, stopping a hair’s width away. Then he turned to the second button. It was the right thing to do, and he would have plenty more time to _RESET_ . He had to _CONTINUE._

Still, Sans sighed as he pressed _CONTINUE_. He was blinded by the glow of white, his anticipation for later experiments sending his soul into a frenzy.

Time was put to a sudden start, the laughter upstairs continuing as if there hadn't been a five minute pause in which Sans had been in the void.

Sans popped upstairs, appearing in the (thankfully unoccupied) bathroom. He spent a minute washing his hands, making sure to erase any suspicion that he had been downstairs.

Sans made sure to wash off the guilt from his hands, too.

Leaning against the mirror, he closed his sockets and tried to calm himself down, but his mind was a blur. If that _RESET_ button did what he thought, then that meant that…

That meant that he _really_ could control the Anomaly. So he could just do what Frisk had done, that one timeline so long ago. Everything could just start over, and everybody would forget. If he pressed that button—

No.

He shouldn’t. He couldn’t

Sans _could never_ betray his friend’s trust in him.

Well, _more than he already had._

He finally had the happy ending he had always wanted. The LOADs and SAVEs were over, and he could live on the Surface with Papyrus like he had always wanted. His life was peaceful, calm and safe.

But then again, _calm and safe was so boring._

It was almost hilarious if it hadn’t been so horribly sick and twisted. He had become the very monster he had been afraid the kid would become. How hypocritical was it of him to constantly ask Frisk if they were still enjoying life when his answer to that same question had slowly turned into ‘ _it could be better_.’?

Sans had realized that it was boring when everything was so hunky-dory up here; he had only felt _truly_ alive after the kid began shaking things up, saving them from their small underground prison or (he hated himself for even thinking) killing every single monster. In a nutshell, he was unhappy with the outcome. Disappointed, even. Really, was this all the surface could provide?

He wondered if that made him messed up, being bored with this newfound peace.

Probably, but who was judging himself but him? He was the judge after all. Delivering evil unto evil. Sans’ thoughts turned to the hall that he had often stood in, waiting to dole out punishment for crimes that never happened.

Sans remembered seeing yellow. Gold specks of light bounced against pools of blood in a fleeting memory that had never happened. Fuzzy dreams of a child covered in dust, knife clenched in their small fist and a wide eyed grin that betrayed their shattered sanity, their killing intent. It was all sorts of wrong. Frisk’s eyes, their _real_ eyes, weren’t even red. They were the color of buttercups—soft and yellow—not scarlet like that _imposter_. His Frisk had never killed a single monster, would never dream of doing this. So why did he remember?

He still remembered a genocidal killing spree, watching as everyone dear to him was turned into cold dust. He remembered spearing the kid with sharp bones as painfully as possible and blasting the kid into a million ashy pieces and throwing them to the ceiling then to the ground until their insides became outsides and so, _so_ many other ways he had killed the kid, watching their limp body flop to the ground a split second before he woke up, covered in cold sweat.

(skeletons shouldn’t sweat, right?)

It went against all logic.

Sans could feel the weight of infinite timelines, the feeling of deja vu, memories that never should have existed in that timeline. Of blood, dust, his hands covered in _something_.

He felt his sins crawling on his back. Sans looked at his hands, expecting blood (so, _so_ much warm blood, dripping and slippery and wet) on his hands. But they were clean.

“nah, just my imagination.”

It was nothing. Just unfounded paranoia.

He did his best to normalize his smile in the mirror, hands shaking as his ribs rattled with slow, shaky breaths, before slowly descending down the stairs to the party.

Frisk was down there and he didn’t want to keep them waiting.

\---

Only one month after the successful test run, Sans had successfully completed two other tests.

He learned two things: one, he could bring things with him into the void, and two, that machine _really_ took a toll on his energy bill.

The skeleton wondered about the uses of this new revelation. What if he would leave it there? Would he be able to recover it? And would it be affected by the passage of time? What would happen if he brought something living into the void? Perhaps a soul? It was small enough.

A soul.

The image of a faintly pulsing red heart flashed into Sans’ mind, his fingers curling into the armrest of the couch unconsciously. He could remember feeling that soft, translucent object, fitting so easily caged in his hand. Soft, light, small, but powerful.

It had always glowed with a sparkling light no matter how worn down Frisk was. It showed Frisk’s determination. Not like he needed that to see how determined the kid was. Sans couldn’t remember the last time they hadn’t been determined to do something. Heck, he even remembered the time they pulled out all the stops on their costume for their school play.

Frisk played a tree that night. A tree.

The memory still cracked him up, and Sans let out a low chuckle. That kid was really something, working on their costume day-in and day-out. So, so hard working.

Though, he really wanted them to rely on someone once in awhile. Let someone else carry their burden; taking care of an entire race was a job too heavy to burden a twelve year-old with. They needed to rely on people more.

 _He wanted them to rely on_ **_him_ ** _._

Sans wanted to be what drove them, a trusted confidant, their pillar of support. There was so much he could have done in the time he had spent observing them in the underground. He could have become their confidant about the timelines, or their protector.

He needed another _chance_.

‘ _To help Frisk_ ’, Sans said to himself, ‘ _To keep them safe, just in case_ ’.

What a load of bullshit.

He knew this was all for himself.

Not that it was a problem or anything.

Somewhere during his experiments, he had stopped feeling guilty about it.

\---

It was the holidays.

It had been nice to take a walk every now and then, especially since festivity was in the air; Sans had been excited to get Frisk something, along with seeing what the kiddo had gotten for him that year. Last year, they had given him a pair of gloves they had knitted, which he gladly took and placed next to the gifts they had given him last year, along with their school crafts and Papyrus’ gifts and crafts. The year had been going great, and he had wondered at times whether he should even consider using the MOD.

Then his phone buzzed and he checked it instinctively. It was from Frisk!

He idly peered at the block of text and he was still bursting with Christmas joy until—

 **Frisk** : _I am so so so so so sorry! I won’t be able to attend the party this year (ha ha, again). I have a skeleton of things to do, but I’ll be able to meet up on the new years._

At this, Sans stopped reading for a moment to process what they had just said as he scrolled through several lines of emojis in various stages of grief.

It took a few seconds. One, two, three. Then, it sunk in as harsh and sudden as a splash of water to wake him up.

Oh.

_Oh._

Sans didn’t even bother to laugh at the pun.

His grin faded completely and his pace slowed to a shuffle as he read the rest of the text. No, no, _of_ _course_ they would be going to the super fancy ambassadorial meeting or whatever it was. Because they were the ambassador. Part of the title and all the responsibilities it forced onto Frisk.

Sometimes, he felt that the kid had too much piled on their shoulders for a twelve year-old. It was stupid for them to expect them to attend each and every gathering. That was what the logical side of Sans thought.

Even then, he shouldn't have been thrown into such a disarray by the news.

So what if the kid had a plus one? Who in their right mind would willingly go to a party that even Frisk described as being a waste of time?

( _He would, but he wasn’t quite sure if he was in his right mind at all._ )

Well, it wasn’t his business who Frisk decided to go with. Nor was he supposed to get jealous when he scrolled even further down the text to see that they would be taking Papyrus that year.

He knew he was being irrational, but— Nope. His thoughts were not going to go there. Not while he was frozen up in the middle of the sidewalk.

Frozen...in the winter. Did that even count as a joke? It wasn’t even very funny.

But one look at the snow at his feet was all it took to almost send Sans into a fit of hysterical laughs. Geeze, even his jokes were a load of rubbish. He passed by a frozen trashcan. His now jokes were pretty bin there, done that.

Dammit.

‘ _Not now, not in public_ ’ he muttered in his mind, clenching and unclenching his fist and taking slow, deep, _useless_ breaths. Oh, who was he kidding, he didn’t even have lungs; breathing exercises did absolutely nothing to calm him down.

 _Not now, not in public,_ was probably his mantra by now. God only knew how often he had almost snapped, holding it in until he was alone and then letting it all out. Fits of hysterical laughter were always unwanted, but he needed a distraction from that soul-rending envy.

Sans hated himself for being so goddamn jealous.

 _Of course_ Frisk had a reason for taking his brother as a companion, and their reason was a completely logical and _platonical_ one: They had taken practically all the other monsters in their immediate circle except his brother. His brother wanted to go. That was it, end of story, no hidden meaning, and Sans knew he shouldn't have read into it so much. But he did, and it made him want to hate everything.

Sans knew he was in the wrong. He was being paranoid and jealous, of his little fucking _brother_ no less. The same brother who had whole heartedly stated that he had no feelings whatsoever for the little human.

Yes—but that had been three years ago. Things could have changed, and his brother could have changed his opinion of Frisk.

Sans had changed his. At first, he had regarded the human kid with suspicion, only keeping the kid alive because of the promise to the old lady behind the door.

As Frisk had progressed through the Underground, gaining not LOVE but _love_ , his feelings had only become a mere fraction of what he currently felt for them. Through the years, it had spiraled into something else. That burning feeling inside his soul that drove his very being, his obsess- no, _devotion_ to Frisk that fueled his actions. It filled him with DETERMINATION, and, to be honest, he had needed some determination for a while now.

He needed Frisk. It was as simple as that.

So as he teleported downstairs as everyone slept, he felt no guilt. He felt nothing as he teleported the last few components into his lab Underground. He was numb during the finalization of the MOD and smiling when he made sure there were no bugs.

It was in the early hours of the morning that he finally finished, reappearing in his room as the sun turned the dark sky a dull gray.

It was snowing again. Idly, almost tiredly, he watched the piles of white collect in the window-sill corner and coat the neighborhood in a fresh dusting of powder.

The world was as cold and silent as a grave. It was still too early and too far from the hustle and bustle of the city that everyone slept, the snow remaining untouched as it slowly grew in height.

He never felt ‘cold’, being a skeleton with no technical nerve endings, but the draft that ruffled the clothes hanging off his bones created a disconcerting feeling nonetheless, and he did feel a dull aching throb deep in his bones when temperatures dropped too much. It was futile to block out the wind; rust in the hinges left the window ajar no matter how hard he tried to un-stick it. Instead, he crawled to the area just below the window, where the cold might seep in but not the wind.

Sans leaned against the wall, exhausted from teleporting back and forth for the past five hours. His skull scraped against wallpaper as he slumped over and his eye-lights dimmed, and he welcomed the feeling of rest after so much work.

His mind was empty, and he drifted aimlessly into a dream.

...But a thought remained, and it quietly snuck into his mind as he slept. What _did_ Frisk think of him? It had haunted his mind for the last year, growing in intensity instead of fading.

What was he to them? A protector, their best friend, or perhaps—

He quickly shot his thoughts down. No, no, and not even close.

He knew he wasn’t any of those things, not to the kid. They had made it very clear what they felt about him. He was just Sans, that skeleton who was their friend but not their closest one, who they treated like an uncle or an older brother, or even, God forbid, their _father_ ; who had seen all their not so subtle attempts to set him up with Tori, _and seriously, Frisk, she’s like, hundreds of years old, and he was what? Fourty? Fifty?... More or less._

He—he wasn’t _that_ old. Of course, he must have seemed as old as Toriel compared to Frisk.

To the kid, he was nothing but one of their many friends. That was what he wanted, right? Maybe he wasn’t their best friend, but he had a start, and he could sit them down and explain to them that frankly, having them try and set him and their kinda old (no offence to Tori) mom is super uncomfortable.

Why did he even care? Why was he so irritated at their stubbornness to find him a date?

Why did he want to erase everything they had done, not even knowing or caring if they would completely forget that he had taken away their life, their happiness, and their _future_?

 _‘Because they didn’t have a future with him.’_ That annoying little voice spoke to him, and Sans grit his teeth because he knew that it was the truth.

That was why, wasn’t it? That was all it was, right? Just a little crush that would probably disappear in some ten-odd years. Then Frisk would find someone else and he’d be forced to put down his feelings anyway. They would be around twenty two by then, meaning he would probably be…well, he’d be sixty four. A full forty two years older.

Right now, he was fifty four. In monster years, about twenty seven. Either way, he was too old to court (or flirt with, or seduce, or really hold any non-platonic feelings in general toward) the kid, and old enough to know better than to dwell on it.

He dwelled on it anyway.

Somehow, his whole plan of transferring the god-like abilities of SAVing and RESETting to himself, from the object of his affections who, and this must be emphasized, was a _child_ , along with trapping his entire species back in and underground prison _just_ to fulfill a sick desire that had arisen out of boredom… well, to be honest, he didn’t feel very _bad_ about it.

Sure, ashamed and just a bit angry at himself, but not guilty. No, he had never thought of it as wrong. And that scared him a little.

But not as much as Frisk leaving him.

\---

Beep.

_“Hey, Sans. Um, I hope you’re feeling okay. Papyrus was feeling a little worried about you, but he’s having fun. Get well soon.”_

Click.

It was Frisk. Again.

This had been the fifth call he had received. Sans wished that he had the heart to text the kid, he really did, but his machine was waiting for him. He was back Underground, feigning illness and missing the Christmas party. In front of him on his basement table sat the Magical Omission Diverter ver. 2.0, looking like some sort of unholy combination between a motor, computer, blender, and whatever else he could take apart and use. It was large enough that it filled a wall of his basement, and he had also attached several cables leading to the CORE.

 _This_ was the fruit of his three years of labor, this shoddy looking thing. This shoddy, taped together, spacetime bending thing. It was pretty good, for only three years of work. Three years of the occasional missed parties. He was almost sad.

But no need to dwell on such things. With this, he could just press a button and he could relive those missed moments, over and over and over.

As much as he liked. Forever.

Was that the sound of the last of his sanity shattering?

Yup.

But he was perfectly, perfectly fine.

“as if.” Sans turned the machine on, the gears creaking to life with its familiar hum. Even the sound felt new and exciting when he realized this would be his first real test run.

The world was sucked into a black void. He would never see the dilapidated walls of his former house again. Nor would he remember them, in favor of looking ahead into the past.

A skeletal hand brushed against light made matter. He was choosing, choosing. Oh, there it was:

_RESET_

He pushed it.

One small step for science, one big leap backwards in time. Only five more seconds.

The countdown seemed to hurry, ready to _just get this thing started_.

Five four-three-twoone-

 

**_Zero_ **

 

Sans woke up on a soft bed. He looked out the window to see snow falling down. No breeze coming through the window. He looked down at his now mostly clean hoodie. The blue color had not faded yet, and it still smelt of ketchup instead of the motor oil smell that would replace it. His room was the same he had remembered from the Underground as well. Same trash tornado, same pile of socks. He was back.

 

_*You shouldn’t have done that._

 

But he already had.

 

_*You’ll regret it._

 

He would never do that.

 

_*Ȉ̼̗̯̎͋'̰̦̪̼̟̻̾̍̓̂ͮ̑ͅl̼̺̳̙̜͌̆̄l͍̗̹̬̰̼̓̈́̇̓͗ͅ ̬̹̜̹̦m̘̝̠͎̬͓͓̌̉͐͆̒ǎ̈́́͗̍ͨǩ̜͇̝̼é̥̋̓ͦ̂͐̌ ̩͓ͧý͕̫̥̼o͖͉̮̟ȕ̯͍̞͕̣͈̬̄̈ͥ̏̒ ͚̱̺̼͈̩͛ͨrͤͪȇ̼̝̠̱͓̱̔̀g̤͈̣̰͇̊ͫ͑̔̃ͅr̀ͬ̈́ͬ͗͌̉e͍͔͇̹ͪ̽̅͂̌̌̾t͍̄̿ ̼̯͙͂͌̾͐̔̋̈i͈̠̗͈̝̱ͨͤt͉ͭ.̩̤̻̿͐ͣ̓̀ !_

 

How about no?

The voice, sounding as if it was in several places at once, yelled in irritation. His bedside table shook slightly.

“nice to see you too, dirty brother killer. isn’t it a knife day to play outside? sun is shining, birds are singing-- well, if it wasn’t Snowdin. seriously, though. Get out.” His voice was low and quiet as his usual joviality left him. Sans was careful as to not wake up Papyrus.

Wait, his brother— Sans’ eye flashed blue.

“Did you do anything to Papyrus this time!? If you did, I swear I’ll make you pay, you—”

“Oh, shut up, will you? I didn’t hurt Mister Precious Cinnamon Roll, if that’s any relief to you. The only one who’s done something is _you_ , Comedian.” A ghostly form shimmered into existence in the corner of his eye. “Now, spill. What the fuck did you just do? Frisk fell down with no memory of the last, oh, _every_ other single timeline, just now. Not very normal, and even worse, _you_ seem to be the one remembering. Me and Flowey just woke up in the Ruins not to long ago, and hoo boy are we pissed. So, give me some answers before I make killing you a personal vendetta.”

“Seriously? Um, no. If you kill me, I’m sure I’ll just come back. The kid did, didn’t they? And right now, I’m the one in control.” He didn’t wait for a reply as he popped into his kitchen. Sans half expected the ‘other kid’ to follow him down, but all he could hear in the house was Papyrus’ high pitched snores.

Hmm, must have finally left him alone. He lied down on the couch, feeling his bones settle just right against the worn fabric.

It was good to be back.

\---

Somewhere in the depths of purple ruins, a child slowly stood up, swaying ever so slightly. Where were they? Just a moment ago, they had been with their friends and family—

Wait, what?

They didn’t have friends. They didn’t even have a family.

So why did they begin to cry when they were saved by that kind goat lady? And when they called her why did they tell her..

“...H-hi...Mom.”


End file.
